Pictures in Word make the files really large.

[JRA]

At my company, we've been using Word to create Work instructions. Most times
we include digital pictures in these documents. This seems to make the files
huge. For example, one file is 271 KB without pictures and 34, 600 KB with
pictures. I'm guessing we could do something different to keep the file size
more manageable, but what?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SlJB?=,

At my company, we've been using Word to create Work instructions. Most times
we include digital pictures in these documents. This seems to make the files
huge. For example, one file is 271 KB without pictures and 34, 600 KB with
pictures. I'm guessing we could do something different to keep the file size
more manageable, but what?

One possibility would be to link the pictures in, without saving any of the
picture information in the document.

Another would be to reduce the amount of information stored in the picture
files (lower resolution for JPEG, for example, or fewer colors).

As a general rule, the newer the version of Word, the better Word does with
compressing graphic file sizes. If you're not using Word 2003, upgrading to
that version could make a difference.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Keith Howell]

If you have access to Adobe Photoshop there is a feature called "Save for
WEB" which allows you to experiment with reducing density and number of
colours and you can dramatically reduce the file size without really damaging
the quality and clarity too much. You can also reduce the dpi. It is perhaps
a bit presumptious of me but I suspect you don't necessarily need all that
resolution for Work Instructions. I have a file on How to build an air hockey
table
(see www.drawingwithword.com) which is full of graphics and pictures and
because I created it in a hurry I didn't compress the pictures. It is 6mb and
over the next 2 days I am going to compress the pictures. If you are
interested, I will post my findings when I have finished the job

 

[Keith Howell]

I,ve already done it and it compressed down from 6mb to 254k without any real
compromise to picture quality for my particular job